Southern Governors Look To Trade Graham Leading Association Meeting With World Theme

September 8, 1985|By Robert A. Liff, Sentinel Miami Bureau

MIAMI — Gov. Bob Graham and his colleagues in the Southern Governors' Association will begin their annual meeting today, focusing on the increasing importance of international trade to the southeastern United States.

The three-day session comes while there is increasing protectionist pressure in Congress. The governors are expected to go on record opposing any legislation that would add roadblocks to trade.

Addresses to the governors are scheduled for Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker and President Nicolas Ardito Barletta of Panama.

Volcker will be joined at a Monday forum by fiscal expert Felix Rohatyn, IBM economist Mary Teeter and former State Department spokesman Hodding Carter in a far-ranging discussion of international and domestic economic conditions. Barletta's speech, at lunchtime, will follow the forum.

The association was formed in the 1930s to protest high transportation costs charged to Southern farmers. It includes governors from 17 states from Maryland to Texas, plus those from Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Graham, a Democrat, is the association chairman. Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander, a Republican scheduled to attend, is chairman of the National Governors' Association, which met last month in Idaho.

Alabama Gov. George Wallace, recovering from surgery, and Maryland Gov. Harry Hughes, traveling in Europe, are expected to skip the Miami meeting, for which the governors have adopted the slogan ''The South Going Global.''

No substantial disagreements are expected. Instead, the governors will hear a number of speakers discuss the increasing importance of international trade, budget and trade deficits, the overvalued dollar, the Latin American debt crisis and plans to turn the South increasingly toward international markets. Graham is also expected to make a strong push for his pet project of encouraging states to finance scholarships for poor Latin American and Caribbean students who may otherwise go to the Soviet Union or other Eastern bloc countries for their university education.

Florida, through a combination of public and private money, is sponsoring 18 such students in state schools.